Before I can give you all the details of this nocturnal death threat, I have to give you a little background.

Don’t hate me, but I’m an easy sleeper. Sleep is my favorite hobby, my favorite sport, my favorite drug. I drop into sleep like a rock falling off a cliff–hard and fast. With the exception of my husband, every roommate I’ve ever had resents my secret somnolent superpower.

In addition, I’m a vivid dreamer. Which means I could be sitting up, eyes open, coherent (-ish) words coming out of my mouth, but my brain is still actively engaged in sleep.

Case in point: I dreamed that there was water dripping out of the ceiling fan above our bed. This was back when Colorado still got rain on a regular basis. And I should, in all fairness, note that we’d experienced and repaired a roof leak, because the previous owners of our house used a buddy to fix the roof who didn’t bother to pull a permit, get the job inspected or seal everything up the way it should have been. So in the midst of this dream, I sit up, shake Joe awake, tell him, “The ceiling fan is leaking water!” Then I fall back onto my pillow and into another dream, while Joe is scrambling awake and trying to figure out where the leak is coming from.

Some of my dreams are like movies. They could be comedies, dramas, science fiction, fantasy or horror. One particular dream involved being chased by some sort of monster. At night. Alone. In the dream, I jumped into my car, locked the doors and took off. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw headlights behind me. When I glanced in the mirror a second time, I realized they weren’t headlights–they were the eyes of the monster that had been chasing me, and it was now in the backseat of the car. Right behind me. Reaching for me. And that’s when Joe woke me up, because I was whimpering in terror loud enough to wake him up.

Sleep is also where I visit with my relatives, both the living and the dead. It’s kind of nice to wake up in the morning and feel like I’ve just had tea and cookies with my late grandmother. On the other hand, I had recurring, vaguely nagging dreams about someone I knew who had died. They continued until, in my dream, I turned to him and said, “You’re dead now. We can let this go.” Haven’t dreamt of him since then.

What does all of this have to do with my bedspread?

I woke up one night feeling confined. There was a rope or string wrapped around me, and it went from my left hand down to my left foot, seemingly tangled in my toes. I found an end to the string and sat up, rolling it up into a ball as I disentangled myself. I set it on the nightstand, figuring that in the light of day, I’d know if it was a dream or not. I can never be sure when something wakes me up if it’s real or imagined. Except the sound of a child vomiting. That’s never a dream.

As soon as the sun came up, my eyes popped open. I rolled over. There, on the nightstand, was a ball of the nylon thread that had been used to sew our bedspread together.

If you woke in the night and discovered your bedclothes were plotting against you as you slept, what would you do?

There was no money in the budget for an exorcism that month, so I chucked the old bedspread and got a delightful new comfortable. It’s well-behaved, hasn’t tried to kill me in my sleep, and has promised not to whisper bad thoughts in my ears while I’m dreaming.

MB – I remember once when you were a child, we were at the farm and we were upstairs sleeping…….you were asleep and you set up in bed, eyes open and started talking…..then you just laid back down……it was realy spooky and you weren’t very old…
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